Feather on the Breath of God - a reflection for the feast day of St Hildegard of Bingen

“Listen; there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honour. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself, but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.” Hildegard von Bingen

Today is the feast day of Hildegard, the day she died in 1179. Hildegard was born in 1098 in the Rhineland area of Germany. During her long life she ran two abbeys, wrote nine books, in which she recorded her visions and her holistic healing system, composed over 70 liturgical songs, undertook several preaching tours, and wrote over 300 letters to leading political and religious figures of the day. In 2012 she was made 'doctor of the church' by Pope Benedict XVI, one of only four women to hold that title.

“The Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7

The Jewish Study Bible commentary on this verse reads,

“Here, man has a lowlier origin than in the parallel in 1:26 – 28. He is created not in the image of God but from the dust of the earth. But he also has a closer and more intimate relationship with his Creator, who blows the breath of life into him, transforming that lowly, earth-bound creature into a living being. In this understanding, the human being is not an amalgam of perishable body and immortal soul, but a psychophysical unity who depends on God for life itself.”

Hildegard's version of this text, from her own vision of creation, is even more earthy, 

“With my mouth I kiss my own chosen creation. I uniquely, lovingly, embrace every image I have made out of the earth's clay. With a fiery spirit I transform it into a body to serve all the world.”

Hildegard had a very strong sense that a human being is “a psychophysical unity who depends on God for life itself.” She had a very strong sense of the sacredness of the body and the earth, and of the whole of life being held in divine love. 

In the West, we are used to thinking in a dualistic manner – body and soul, mind and matter, but in Hebrew, the word 'Ruach' in Hebrew means breath, wind, and spirit. It refers to things both physical and more-than-physical, the tangible and the intangible, which are all part of the same reality. 

The breath, which is in a very physical sense our life-force, is both tangible and intangible. We feel it but we cannot see it – unless it's a very cold day! Most of the time we are unaware of our own breathing – it is something we do automatically.

Over the last 18 months the airborne transmission of coronavirus has made us all painfully aware of the negative consequences of the fact that we are all breathing the same air. Yet our shared breath is also a sacred sign of our interconnectedness. I would like to invite us into a conscious, sacred relationship with the breath in our own bodies as the life-force, our connection to the One Source of Life we share. 

To feel that I am a 'feather on the breath of God' – that I am supported and directed by the Source of Life, I need to give myself space to tune into it. One of the best ways I have found to do that is to rest my awareness in my heart-space and feel the calming rhythm of the resting breath as the life-force moving through my body, and through the world. 

The Sufi scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz, in his wonderful book, Prayers of the Cosmos, writes about the many layers of meaning in the Aramaic Lord's Prayer. For each line of the prayer he suggests some accompanying body prayer practices. I opened the book at random the other day and read, “While lying or sitting, return to the peaceful place inside creating by feeling your heartbeat and breathing. As the medieval mystic Hildegard of Bingen said, everything may be felt a “feather on the breath of God.” A lovely moment of synchronicity. 

Hildegard says that prayer is “breathing in and breathing out the one breath of the universe.” What does it feel like in our bodies when we breathe as a sacred act, when the breath itself becomes our prayer? Breathing in and breathing out the one breath of the universe.

Breathing in peace, breathing out love...

Breathing in love, breathing out peace..

“The feather flew, not because of anything in itself, but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.” 

In the 12 step programme for recovery from addiction, an important step is to place oneself in the hands of a higher power. This involves letting go of the illusion that we ourselves are in complete control of everything in our lives. I struggle with letting go of control. Over the last few weeks I have been taking lessons from my dog in living more in the moment, rather than over-thinking and over-planning everything. It might sound quite trivial, but just going for a walk without planning the route in my head in advance and allowing the spirit to guide us (or to be honest, mostly by the spirit of the dog, because she's usually a few yards ahead of me) has been a revelation. After all, dog and god are the same word, just spelled differently!

“The feather flew, not because of anything in itself, but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.” 

In her book, A Retreat with Gerard Manley Hopkins and Hildegard of Bingen, Gloria Hutchinson invites us to consider the question, “At this stage in your life, do you experience yourself more as a “feather on the breath of God” or a stone at the bottom of a pond?” If I'm honest, some days I am a feather, some days I am a stone. The tides of the spirit have their ebb and flow. Some days I feel weighed down by my troubles, some days I feel light and spacious and airy.

On the good days, while I might not have Hildegard's visionary certainty of divine dependency, I can certainly relate to the feeling of being upheld by a love greater than myself – a love that flows through me and through us all, when we are, in the words of our hymn, “servants of life and clear channels of love.” It is in the connection of heart to heart, in human acts of love and compassion that I experience divine love and compassion. 

Hildegard wrote, “The marvels of God are not brought forth from one's self. Rather, it is more like a chord, a sound that is played. The tone does not come out of the chord itself, but rather, through the touch of the musician. I am, of course, the lyre and harp of God's kindness.”

Perhaps another word for God's kindness is grace. Grace is a word I had some resistance to for a long time. I associated it with the line from the song, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me." Saving, wretch, none of that computes with me. But a couple of years ago I had an experience that changed my perspective.

One Sunday morning I was on my way to church when I came across an accident. A woman had been knocked down by a car whilst trying to cross the road at the four banks. She was lying face down on the tarmac. Her shoes and glasses had come off and were lying on either side of her. The young woman who had been driving the car was sobbing uncontrollably. A young man was phoning an ambulance. A woman was yelling for help. 

The woman yelling for help and I talked to the woman who had been knocked down and ascertained that the car had hit her arm, and she had banged her head falling, but was otherwise unhurt. We managed to get a scarf under her face, very gently, to make her more comfortable. It was raining so I put my umbrella up over her head. I picked up her shoes and glasses, and put them in her handbag. 

Other passers-by began stopping to help. Someone found a blanket in the boot of their car to cover her. Someone else turned out to be a counsellor, who began comforting the driver of the car. Two other passers-by turned out to be doctors, who took charge while we waited for the ambulance. 

When I returned home from church I had a flash of clarity. Grace was at work that morning at the crossroads. Something awful had happened, but all the right people came to the right place at the right time to help transform it by their acts of love and compassion. In the words of the song, I “was blind, but now I see."